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from the planned^Wscheduled-obsolescence dept.
Sonos, the consumer electronics company known for audio streaming and "smart" speakers, has decided that the music controller device, the "CR100", has reached end of life. By which they mean they will be pushing a software upgrade that will kill it.
... the next Sonos update in early April will turn off the CR100 connection -- unless you decide you don't want any updates at all. (Make sure you set that up in advance -- if you accept the update, you can't undo it and go back to using the old controller.)
That means if you want to keep on using a device you're happy with, you have to give up all the new features on all your Sonos speakers.
The company says its primary concern is the age of the lithium ion batteries in the controllers; although in that case an official device recall would be better than an update that stops them working - and a battery replacement scheme would handle the problem just as well.
Although the controller is old (Sonos stopped selling the CR100 in 2009) it is still perfectly functional for many users. However, according to a forum posting explaining the options these users will have to choose between the CR100 and the functionality of the rest of their system:
... opting not to update means you will not receive any new features or future security patches for your entire system – not just the CR100. For example, being on an unsupported version means that you might lose connectivity to music services, as is already the case for Google Play Music on the CR100. It is necessary to configure your system in advance to avoid future updates. Any update applied to the firmware and/or to the app, even unintentionally, is irreversible.
Originally spotted on The EEV Blog Youtube channel.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 12 2018, @12:23PM (13 children)
Wise people buy do, yeah. We've got a lot of smart people around here who'd spend thousands of dollars worth of hours designing their own system, with blackjack, and hookers though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday February 12 2018, @12:30PM (3 children)
FTFY.
Before it sounded like English, but I could't get it. Now it makes better sense.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 12 2018, @12:35PM (2 children)
I'm still caffeinating this morning. Coherent English isn't due to arrive for another fifteen ounces and two cigarettes.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Funny) by BsAtHome on Monday February 12 2018, @01:21PM
You seem to be recovering from sleep quite fast. It usually takes me a week to recover, just to discover that a new week has started in which recovery is required.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 13 2018, @07:29AM
You boot a helluva lot faster than I do.
It seems just the time I get powered up and coherent, its time to go home. Employers want the hours of my day that are the least productive - that is in terms of creativity.
The only thing that comes up on me at dawn is the physical plant... that is I gotta piss and crap. Don't ask me to think. I can barely recite things from memory, providing I can even access it.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday February 12 2018, @02:05PM (2 children)
FTFY.
Tsk, tsk Buzzard. I'm disappointed in you.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 12 2018, @02:22PM (1 child)
I was talking about the Bender quote not cmn32480's cats.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday February 12 2018, @02:30PM
Hmmm...I wonder. My cats are named after Heinlein characters. Does that mean I'm rectilinear? ;)
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday February 12 2018, @02:35PM (5 children)
Which means their custom system is better, because they understand it, and it has blackjack and hookers unlike the out-of-the-box walled-garden version. What's the problem?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 12 2018, @02:44PM (4 children)
That we have a tendency to spend hours automating something that saves seconds mostly. If you go OSS with it and count the seconds it saves everyone, that's a good deal. If you only count the time it saves you, not so much.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday February 12 2018, @03:03PM (1 child)
It depends how often you spend seconds on something, and how much you have to maintain the automation in question.
If, for instance, it saves you 15 seconds every hour, and took you 30 minutes to come up with it, and there's no maintenance effort, then you're in the net-positive range in a couple of weeks. Not a big win, but still nice. Plus it's one less thing to think about, which means you don't need to spend the 15 minutes or so context-switching.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2018, @11:29PM
Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1205/ [xkcd.com]
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Monday February 12 2018, @04:29PM
I disagree. I have spent quite a lot of time (months) on some PowerShell scripts that take server QA checks from 2 hours down to 60 seconds. A massive saving. The value add comes when you can now order a QA check of an environment and compare it against last months. Without my automation, this would never have been possible in our mutli-tenanted environment.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Monday February 12 2018, @04:36PM
It depends a lot on the complexity of the thing versus the off-the-shelf implementations. I moved to using an off-the-shelf WiFi AP a year or so ago, because the one my ISP provides is fast, has sensible firewall config, almost sensible DHCP config, and is less effort to maintain than the one I was using. For music in my living room and bedroom, I use musicpd, one on a NAS and one on a RPi (running Linux, because FreeBSD doesn't support the RPi3's audio output yet). The most complex part of configuring those was running the speaker cable and the result means that my partner and I can control the music from any of our laptops or phones and the RPi can mount the read-only NFS share containing all of my music and so can treat its flash as read-only most of the time. Without anything going to some random service that might go away at any time and is probably harvesting personal information while it's there.
sudo mod me up